This has been updated with pass/fail
Some context: In 2018 my wife and I bought 3 former haying fields, about 4.5 acres, and built a home there, which we moved into early 2019. Some pictures. Landscaping was not in the budget, so we're doing it all ourselves, which takes a considerable amount of our time and these goals.
Goals are numbered only in the order I thought of them. I will try to update this page as I succeed or fail.
- Finish clearing the 3rd field (overtaken by pines) and plant about a half-acre(?) of buckwheat by hand(???) harvest by hand.
❌ Update august 2020: This failed. See the official buckwheat planting thread for details
- Move garden closer to house, so we can walk outside with bare feet on brick path to reach it easily from kitchen
(this aerial is old but gives the idea)
✔️ Update: We created 4 new beds next to the house and used both gardens this year. We will probably add 4 more beds next year to this new upper garden
✔️ In the fall we created even more space for gardens close to the house
- Pay for a friend with a tractor to build a retaining wall out of granite (already acquired) behind house. Build nice patio. It will look like pictured. Just kidding (unless...?)
✔️✔️✔️❌ Our friend got seriously injured and was off to a slow start, but now I am working with him to not only build the wall and a stone patio, but rebuild my smaller brick patio much larger:
- Build dry stone arch bridge with remaining granite to the 2nd field over the big stream (by "of view")
❌ Alas, have a bridge that the tractor can cross but have not started this at all!
- Build small shed
✔️ May update: decided to build a chicken house instead. It is being sided right now.
- Build wood storage outside
✔️ A simple semi-timber framed storage was built, plus a holz-hausen
- Turn the entire front lawn into a crazy field of poppies, probably a mix of shirley, california, and icelandic. The california poppies experiment grew really well this year but we'll see how they do year over year.
❌ May update: Although I planted hundreds of thousands of poppy seeds, either the strange spring weather (very cold then very hot with no rain) or my poor timing has caused only a handful of them to grow. This is very unfortunate, but I will try again next year.
- Have a baby
update: coming July
May update: 30 weeks
✔️ July 21 update: Luca Marin Sarris
- Design some cottages. It may be many years before we're able to build one, though
❌ no progress :(
- Design a workshop, build it if we have funds? Something really simple, enough to hold woodworking equip, a pottery wheel, and small propane forge hooked up to our 500gal tank?
❌ !! No progress!!
- (in the winter months, mostly) publish more than last year. Winter here lends itself to this sort of thing.
so far: Designing a New Old Home: Part 1 Jan 16 2019
✔️ Update: I have started newsletter in the summer, surprisingly
- Host more guests than last year, cook for more people. We both love cooking for other people, but have kept our heads down a lot in 2019.
❌ Update: so there's this virus...
- Make a few more "for fun" websites
❌(✔️? Starting Simeville in earnest)
- Make a small LLC? And sell some art stuff? I'm not sure what yet, maybe pottery or wood things, just for fun.
❌ not started
- Leave the US at least once (a goal we have for every year, even if its just driving to Montreal)
❌❌❌ Well the virus will kill this one...
- On the 3rd field, start to build a temple to Artemis or Apollo, or the sun. It will almost certainly have to be timber, not stone. Also build a small temple or shrine to Christ. Probably won't be done in 2020.
❌/✔️? We'll see how far I get. I still have a month. It will be a shrine to Saint Marinus.
- Landscape the "duck pond" area until its beautiful.
❌? June update: I sunk a tractor near here and made it somewhat uglier :D
✔️? Fall update: The area has been considerably cleaned up now, mostly raw dirt. The duck pond itself is still fairly plain.
- Start a book of fables, try to self-publish it before the end of 2021? I have only some notes for this so far, I really don't know how long it will take.
✔️ May update: started a collection, but it's small so far.
✔️ August update: Through my newsletter I now have several, which I will start the collection nicely.
- Learn the basics of timber framing. Maybe use 5. and 6. as practice for this.
✔️? Did some very rudimentary stuff with the chook house. August: Practicing some techniques for the wood storage, too.
- Furnish another bedroom in the house. We just got our guest bedroom a bed and mattress (don't all visit at once guys) but it needs everything else.
❌/✔️ August update: this is 30% complete
- Build shelves for the kitchen, just one level, right above the tile
❌
- Build a real kitchen island (right now its just ikea stilts)
✔️ Coming very soon!
- Make some kind of village builder, simulator, or collaboration game. Something beautiful. Probably in HTML Canvas. Probably (???) in 3d.
❌ Started in winter but abandoned due to lack of time, for now
- Re-start the orchard, that was started and semi- (mostly?) destroyed this year. Plant bigger trees or come up with something for deer defense.
✔️ May update: One peach tree is now defended, two new apple trees are in.
- Find some way to inspire more people, or make them more optimistic. Or find a way to make people want beautiful things & want to make beauty. This is ofc hazy, but I think I'll have a good sense of whether or not I accomplish it.
✔️ I think I understand this now. Several people have told me to ✔️ this goal but I think most of the work here is yet to come.